Hello, Florian.
Thanks for taking the time to write down your frustrations. It's important that we hear all sides so we can work on what's most important to the most people.
Several of the issues you raise pertain to the ORB, so I've asked that team to respond as well. (I've also altered the subject of your post slightly to reflect that).
As for the app client container and Java Web Start concerns you mention:
[b]Footprint[/b] - We very much want to drastically shrink the footprint precisely because of how its size inflates the [i]initial [/i]download time.
I'm expect you realize this - but I'll say it for others who might not know - that once an end-user has launched one app client this way then for future launches Java Web Start will use the local, cached copies of those JARs and will not download them again - unless the JARs have changed in the meantime.
The organization of the JARs for all of GlassFish may change quite a bit in V3, and it makes sense for us to attack the app client container footprint problem at the same time.
[b]Added customization of the generated JNLP documents[/b] - This is also an improvement we very much want to make. Issue 1118 records this RFE but it's good to hear how important it is to individual developers.
[b]Usability[/b] - As I have written elsewhere, our initial implementation of Java Web Start support was intended to allow people to get going with this feature and to collect feedback on what further requirements we should try to address next. I feel it has met both of those goals. We continue to use your feedback and that from quite a few others in planning our V3 work.
I have to say that not everyone shares your view that the feature is "unusable" although I certainly see how it falls short in your situation. As with any engineering effort, we had to balance what we wanted to accomplish initially against the people and time we had to do it and that led to some tough choices. Having said that, there are some developers who have successfully deployed using this feature and are quite happy with it.
I think many of your concerns will be addressed as we improve this feature in future releases, I hope sooner rather than later. I trust as that happens we can count on you and other developers using the feature to make sure those changes are meeting your needs.
- Tim
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